THEKEY ICO Overview
Digital identification is a central facet of life in the 21st century. Growth figures for the identity verification (IDV) industry predict a 14 billion dollar market valuation by 2021, with technologies like fingerprint scans and facial recognition quickly becoming commonplace. In our everyday lives, we must constantly verify our identity to carry out routine tasks such as making payments, taking flights or using health insurance. Still, the technology is rife with faults; issues of data security and identity theft cost consumers billions of dollars per year. Creating a totally secure, infallible identification system sounds like an impossibility at this stage, but with blockchain technology, THEKEY ICO has set out to do just that.
THEKEY ICO Value Proposition
THEKEY is a second generation, onchain identity verification solution that uses personal data authenticated by the Chinese government for real world applications. The underlying Blockchain based Dynamic Multi-Dimension Identification (BDMI) technology is an onchain extension of an existing IDV project led by THEKEY CEO Catherine Li. Built on the NEO platform, THEYKEY ICO is yet another piece of the emerging NEO Smart Economy to hit the market.
Within THEKEY Ecosystem, there are three parties:
(1) Validators who process the identity verification request and generate the IDV result
(2) Service Providers who initiate IDV request
(3) Individual Users
Users, who are customers of the Service Providers, must provide consent to Validators to
process each IDV request. The whole process is facilitated by THEKEY Token (TKY), an NEP-5 token. To illustrate how the ecosystem functions:
An Individual User pays a health care provider TKY to submit a health insurance claim. The service provider pays TKY to Validators to purchase their IDV service. Any new data that Validators collect from the submission utilizes TKY to the trade data with other Validators (for which they must also pay Individual User to do) and any new data from the Individual User (such as medical record updates) is rewarded to the User with TKY.
THEKEY ICO Team
Founder and CEO, Catherine (Xueli) Li’s expertise rests at the intersection between computer science, data analytics and healthcare. She is a licensed physician turned healthcare data systems manager. She’s worked with IMS Healthcare, most recently as a senior manager, for nearly a decade. As of two years ago, she has been CEO of Ebaonet Healthcare Information Technology, the company which implemented the offchain IDV tech platform that became THEKEY.
On December 21st (today’s date of publishing), VP Chief Blockchain Expert at Huawei, Ken Huang, is now serving as President of THEKEY. With a solid link between the project and the largest telecom equipment manufacturer in the world, the project stands to gain enormously from Ken’s expertise and connections.
CBO, Jian Wang, has been on the frontline of the Chinese government’s development of blockchain technology for over three years. He is a first generation developer of the Linux based open source Hyperledger and also developed 12 dApps over the past three years for city and provincial governments in Nanjing and Jiangsu. Jian is leading the development of the BDMI technology.
Guochun Xu is THEKEY’s CTO, responsible for product planning and development. He spent 10 years with China Unicom as a technician and has 8 years experience in technical management. He’s already successfully led the team responsible for the offchain deployment of THEKEY’s IDV technology.
THEKEY ICO Strengths and Opportunities
Blockchain projects that set out to bridge already existing offchain technologies with onchain platforms tend to offer more promising overall prospects. With THEKEY, the IDV tech dimensions are a carry over of Ebaonet Healthcare Information Technology’s first efforts to implement an internet based IDV platform based on Dynamic Multi-dimension Identification Technology. THEKEY ICO is an onchain version of the same technology, combining the innovative nature of the IDV platform with the security, scalability and unalterable character of the onchain protocol.
THEKEY’s IDV pilot project using government data is already operating in two Chinese cities. Customers use the system to receive pension payments and healthcare insurance reimbursements. Efforts are underway to scale the deployment of the IDV project in dozens more cities, with the goal to integrate the existing offchain infrastructure with the onchain protocol later in 2018 when the product is ready. The successful scaling of the offchain product speaks to the promising nature of the business model.
As for other applications beyond the government, China Unicom and China Minsheng Bank have signed partnership agreements with THEKEY to utilize the technology for KYC. According to a recent AMA with Catherine Li, there are additional partnerships in the works as well. More partnerships across various sectors increases the probability of the product’s overall success, as its utility is tested across the market.
The Verdict on THEKEY
THEKEY ICO is a stellar project in every respect. The team have proven track records in their respective fields and already achieved a significant milestone together. Partnerships with some of China’s biggest enterprises and the government itself serve to further extend the scope of the project’s potential in a number of different markets. With everything we’ve seen thus far from this project, we’ve decided to place a big bet on THE KEY ICO.
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